IOC Sanctions two Russian Athletes as part of Oswald Commission Findings

Today, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has published the first conclusions from the Oswald Commission hearings, which are being conducted in the context of the Sochi 2014 forensic and analytic doping investigations. As a result, two Russian athletes, Alexander Legkov and Evgeniy Belov, have been sanctioned.

Additional decisions from these first hearings will be communicated in the coming days. More hearings concerning other athletes will be held over the next few weeks.

c) has the medals, the medallist pins and the diplomas obtained in the above-mentioned Events withdrawn and is ordered to return the same to the International Olympic Committee.

II. The Russian Team is disqualified from the Men’s 4x10km Cross Country Skiing Event. The corresponding medals, medallist pins and diplomas are withdrawn and shall be returned to the International Olympic Committee.

III. The International Ski Federation is requested to modify the results of the above-mentioned events accordingly and to consider any further action within its own competence.

IV. Alexander LEGKOV is declared ineligible to be accredited in any capacity for all editions of the Games of the Olympiad and the Olympic Winter Games subsequent to the Sochi Olympic Winter Games.

V. The Russian Olympic Committee shall ensure full implementation of this decision.

VI. The Russian Olympic Committee shall notably secure the return to the International Olympic Committee, as soon as possible, of the medals, the medallist pins and the diplomas awarded in connection with Men’s 50km Cross Country Skiing Event to Alexander LEGKOV and the medals, the medallist pins and the diplomas awarded in connection with the Men’s 4x10km Cross Country Skiing Event to the members of the Russian Team.

The Disciplinary Commission, chaired by IOC Member Denis Oswald, is responsible for investigating the alleged doping violations by individual Russian athletes. Therefore, all the samples collected from Russian athletes at the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 that were available to the IOC were re-analysed. This had two goals – to further review the samples for evidence of doping, and separately to determine if the samples themselves or the bottles were manipulated or tampered with.

Due to the nature and complexity of the cases, this thorough, comprehensive and time-consuming process has taken several months and had to involve external forensic experts, who had to develop a legally-defendable methodology for all the cases under the jurisdiction of the Disciplinary Commission. Due process has to be followed, and re-analysis is still underway.

The IOC showed its determination to protect clean athletes from the very beginning of the case, in July 2016, by immediately establishing the Disciplinary Commission and the Inquiry Commissions, following the publication of the McLaren report. The IOC took this extra measure since Prof. McLaren did not have the authority to bring forward Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) cases against individual athletes.

After receiving the results from the final McLaren report in December 2016, the IOC opened proceedings against the 28 Russian athletes mentioned in the report, which are now being heard by the Oswald Commission.

The Oswald Commission has announced that all hearings for active athletes who could qualify for the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 will be completed by the end of November 2017. In accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code, confidentiality has to be respected in the interests of the athletes concerned. The purpose of this work is to ensure that the International Federations (IFs) have the necessary tools to protect the qualification competitions. The outcome of the hearings will be announced as soon as possible after each individual hearing. This will allow the IFs to follow up with their own disciplinary hearings immediately, and to take the athletes concerned out of the qualification system as soon as possible.

The decision with regard to the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 will be taken by the IOC Executive Board in December based on the findings of the Inquiry Commission chaired by Samuel Schmid, a former President of Switzerland.

The International Olympic Committee is a not-for-profit independent international organisation made up of volunteers, which is committed to building a better world through sport. It redistributes more than 90 per cent of its income to the wider sporting movement, which means that every day the equivalent of 3.4 million US dollars goes to help athletes and sports organisations at all levels around the world.